Section: US & Canada

Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European аnd Eurasian Affairs, has warned that, if efforts to liberalize the economy and fight endemic graft fail, Ukraine “risks sliding backwards once again into corruption, into lawlessness, into vassal statehood.” …read more Source: Radio Free Europe / Radio...

Ukraine will begin building a wall on its easternmost border with Russia, the governor of the war stricken Luhansk region told the country’s Channel 5. Since last February a tense ceasefire in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions has neared a collapse several times, but has largely held. In 2014 Ukraine’s Prime Minister...

Russia’s five month-long campaign in Syria came to an end on Monday with President Putin’s declaration that his forces can pull out, having “achieved their goals.” His withdrawal was accompanied by thanks from Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose regime he appears to have successfully propped up. Here are the reasons why Putin can...

Rabbi Moshe Azman, founder of the Anatevka community near Kiev, Feb. 29, 2016. (R. Litevsky/Courtesy of the Office of Rabbi Moshe Azman) ANATEVKA, Ukraine (JTA) — At the age of 53, Sergey and Elena Yarelchenko fled their native city of Lugansk with three suitcases and moved into a wooden room in a muddy refugee camp outside Kiev. Like hundreds of...

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Former European indoor 800-meter champion Nataliya Lupu of Ukraine will miss this week’s world indoor championships in Portland after testing positive for meldonium, the same substance which led to Maria Sharapova’s positive test at the Australian Open. …read more Source: CNS...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is not an easy politician to read. He is willing to say one thing while his diplomats and military do another—as the long-running conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated. His statements are at the pinnacle of a Russian state propaganda machine shrouding any “truth” in layers of often deceptive assertions. And, as the...

Mission accomplished. It was a hell of an exit, and a surprise one at that, when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his soldiers home from Syria on Monday, five months and 9,000 fighter jet sorties after entering the fray and changing the trajectory of the five-year-long war. (Some troops will stay behind to protect personnel at Russian...

Russia’s fighter jets have come home from Syria to a heroes’ welcome. At an airbase near the eastern city of Voronezh on Tuesday, returning pilots were carried aloft in a ceremony replete with the pomp and circumstance befitting a victorious army.President Vladimir Putin’s Monday night announcement that Moscow was pulling troops...

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s surprise announcement to withdraw most Russian war planes and personnel from Syria has left the public in the dark about his motives, raising troubling questions about whether the move will provide an opening for the U.S., Turkey and their Gulf allies to resume their drive towards regime change in...

Ukraine’s greatest challenge remains the Russian occupation of the Crimean peninsula and the restoration of sovereignty in the eastern Donbas region through full implementation of the September 2014 and February 2015 Minsk agreements, according to a top U.S. diplomat. Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Victoria Nuland...